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Ten of Carroll Shelby's greatest machines: From a Le Mans-winning Aston to the GLHS to the great beyond

May 10, 2012

1 of 101959 Aston Martin DBR1

Photo by Dave Hamster/Flickr

2 of 101962 AC Cobra

Photo by Craig Howell/Flickr

3 of 10Cobra Daytona Coupe (right) takes on an Austin-Healey

Photo by Dave Hamster/Flickr

4 of 10The 427 Cobra makes collectors salivate

Photo by Brandon Brubaker/Flickr

5 of 10Shelby's watershed GT350 is still popular in historic racing

Photo by Nathan Bittinger/Flickr

6 of 10Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt won Le Mans in this GT40 Mark IV

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

7 of 10The Omni GLHS was a turbocharged pocket screamer

Photo by Dodge

8 of 10A Cobra for the '90s, the Viper RT/10 gave Dodge a sorely-needed halo car

Photo by Alexandre Prévot/Flickr

9 of 10The Ford GT showed the world that American automakers could build a supercar to beat the band

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

10 of 10662hp. 200mph. The 2013 Shelby GT500 is the most potent factory Mustang in history

Photo by Davey G. Johnson

As Pete Lyons notes in his obituary, Carroll Shelby was something of a con man. He was also something of a legit genius. The man's a legend because he did enough things that really worked. He won Le Mans as a driver, as a team manager and a constructor. He's largely responsible for the performance-car reputation the Ford Mustang enjoys today. Without his Cobra, there likely never would've been a Viper, and of course, he had a hand in that car's genesis, too.

While many can and undoubtedly will argue with this list — we're already certain the Eleanor owners will be sore — we've picked out 10 Shelby-associated cars that made an impact.

1. 1959 Aston Martin DBR1

In the penultimate year of his racing career, Caroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori swept the field at Le Mans in the DBR1. It was to be Aston Martin's last victory in the 24-hour endure-a-thon until the DBR9 won its class in 2007.

2. 1962 AC Cobra

Its shape's impression perhaps blunted by decades of questionably-faithful kit cars, the original Cobra — whose basic styling dates back to the 1953 AC Ace — still stands as the loveliest of the British-American hybrid sporting machines and as one of the most influential cars of the muscle decade. Plus, the Windsor-powered wonder gave the Corvette crew a domestic competitor to sweat.

3. 1964 Cobra Daytona Coupe

Famously penned by Pete Brock, the Daytona eschewed the Cobra roadster's Britishness for a more Italian-American look. The Kamm-tail coupe worked as intended, trouncing Enzo's equally-legendary 250 GTO. What's more, with only six constructed, the Daytona's even rarer than Ferrari's most vaunted machine.

4. 1965 427 Cobra

Because Carroll Shelby was from Texas and because more of everything is always better, the Cobra was embiggened to swallow more cubic inches. In this case, the cubes came courtesy of Ford's storied 427-inch side-oiler, a high-performance derivative of Dearborn's Ford-Edsel architecture. To handle the extra bulk and power, the chassis saw a thorough upgrade, with coil springs swapped in for AC's postwar leaf jobs. Extra-bulgey S/C models took the cartoon-Cobra to its logical extreme.

5. 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350

Ol' Shel worked his F-101-grade voodoo on Lee Iacocca's rebodied Falcon, turning what Shelby famously termed a “secretary's car” into an SCCA weapon. It established the Mustang's performance credentials just as John DeLorean was firing the opening salvos of the musclecar wars with the early Pontiac GTOs.

6. 1967 Ford GT40 Mk IV

While the first three iterations of Ford's GT40 were transatlantic affairs involving Lola's Eric Broadley, the Mark IV was largely a homegrown project. The cars were designed at Ford, built at Shelby's facility and utilized big-block power. The Mark IV only saw battle twice — at the '67 12 Hours of Sebring and 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was enough, however. Bruce McLaren and Mario Andretti hustled the Mark IV to victory at Sebring, while Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt covered enough miles in France to take the top spot on the podium. Gurney then proceeded to shower the crowd with champagne, setting a precedent for future victorious racing drivers across many a motoring discipline.

7. 1986 Dodge Shelby GLHS

An FWD hatch may seem like the odd duck of the bunch, but this hepped-up compact stands firmly in the Shelby tradition of adding more, well, everything to a European-bred automobile. He took the Dodge Omni — originally developed by Chrysler's now-defunct European Simca unit — and added more power. The result? The turbocharged Omni GLH, which notoriously stood for “Goes Like Hell.” By the standards of the day, it did exactly that. More fiddling on Shelby's part resulted in the even hairier GLHS, which on a good day, could stomp practically anything made in America at the time. Take that, Wolfsburg!

8. 1992 Dodge Viper RT/10

Imagined as a modern interpretation of the Cobra and constructed with Shelby's input, it's safe to say that Chrysler's rude-begets-ruder monster couldn't have existed without him.

9. 2005 Ford GT

Shelby never met a fence he couldn't seem to mend if the price was right. His longstanding beef with Ford melted away in 2003 when they made him an offer to rejoin the fold. SVT sought his input in the development in one of the hands-down finest cars of the past 40 years, a modern rendition of a car he'd had such an instrumental hand in during the 1960s: the Ford GT40. Due to legal shenanigans, the resultant car left showrooms as the Ford GT. It's just as well, since the mid-engined supercar wound up over 40 inches tall.

10. 2013 Ford Shelby GT500

Although the GT500 was developed by Ford's factory performance division, SVT's most bonkers Mustang carries the Shelby name. It has 662hp. It goes 200mph, just like Bill Cosby's Super Snake. As in the Shelby/Ford heyday of the 1960s, one can walk into a Ford store and roll out in what's truly one of the most insane cars on the road, regardless of price. It stands as a fitting send-off to one of the titans of American motorsport and performance.